CONFLICT AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION

Conflicts of one sort or another happen every day. Some hit you head-on. Some chisel away at the ground under your feet. Others slip up on you from behind, seemingly unseen. Good feelings get crowded out by bad ones. The days turn sour. How can they be made sweet again? How can our daily lives ever be made strife free?

The stories above, and Uyeshiba's comments about the spiritual purpose of aikido, offer a number of clues about how this might be done.

First of all, we have to accept conflict as part of life. It is not something we are ever likely to escape entirely. It is not something we can eliminate from our lives. Because of the myriad ways in which we attach ourselves to life and resist change, conflict can occur anywhere and at any time.

Secondly, all conflicts can be seen as having no particular beginning and no particular end. If you try to trace back the history of any specific conflict you'll find no single point where you can say it began. Follow the conflict through and you'll find no single point where you can say with confidence that you've resolved it for good.

Thirdly, we have to see conflict as something not to be won or lost. If we try and win, we can lose. If we try and fight, we risk being defeated. We can flee, of course, and that may be the prudent thing to do. Conflicts are endless and everywhere, however, and we can't run away from them all.

When we can't run away, aikido can give us another way to respond, a way that is neither fight nor flight. Aikido says: "Don't fight. Don't flee either. Let go instead. Let go of the whole situation. Go inside it. Follow it through. Use only your intuition".

The aikido option is neither defensive nor offensive. It transcends both.

Letting go, following inside and opening out from within, takes a watchfulness that is not easy to find. You can't anticipate. That signals your intentions and draws a countering response. It turns a conflict into a fight. You can't rely on your memory either. If you do so you'll find you're relying on routines from the past. Your thinking will inhibit your awareness of the present. You won't be able to innovate. You won't have the presence of mind to do what the old man did in the train or Yamada did in the bar.

What can you do, then? It's all very well of me to say: "Be watchful. Don't anticipate. Don't think." But if you don't have a natural flair for this sort of thing, expanded awareness of this sort is not easy to come by or even to understand. So what is to be done?

One simple thing to do is to breathe out. As you breathe out physically you can follow your breath into the conflict. As your breath extends, you can watch it expand. You're less likely this way to become fixed on whatever else is happening. You're less likely to get caught up in the emotions that conflicts create.

You won't get so upset, for example, by the anger of others. You won't be so stung by their criticisms or hurt by their accusations or diminished by their judgements. You won't feel so rejected. You'll see more readily through other people's subterfuges, other people's duplicity. And you'll see more clearly the other side of situations.

None of us can avoid sadness and pain but we can be less stuck with it. Breathing out makes us more free.

In aikido training breathing out comes more naturally the harder you train. Thinking about breathing will inhibit how you move. It brings the brain into the act, with all of its memories and intentions, with all of its - and our - egoism. The more you move, however, the more "breathing out" takes care of itself. The more you forget yourself. The less you have to think.

This is hard to do by yourself. That's why good aikido instructors just throw you. By being thrown continuously you cease to be able to "do" anything but enter and receive. The movement is done for you. As you become more tired it becomes harder and harder to hold your breath. You breathe out because you have no choice. You move too much and you get too tired to do anything else.

Breathing out is like dancing with life. "Breathe out ... and leave yourself watching" a colleague of mine once wrote. "Move very closely with life as if you were dancing with every moment. At times of conflict follow your breath into your adversary or into the situation. Dance closely, following and watching with your breath. Don't get involved. Let the breath be gentle and continuous and never consider breathing in. That will look after itself. Dance so closely that you can't tell if you are leading or following. Never get in front, never willfully attempt to change or resolve the situation, and conflict can be your deepest meditation ...".

Conflict can destroy everything you value. It can even destroy your whole existence. How can you avoid the bad aspects of conflict? How can you to stop it destroying what you want? Conflict is stressful and confusing. There's no doubt about that. Conflict conditions would seem to be the opposite of those you need for doing meditation. By breathing out, however, even conflict can become an opportunity to go within. Even conflict can be used to watch our awareness at work.